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Weight Loss Extras

I always knew that sweating improves skin quality, since it flushes out debris from the pores, but there were a couple of unexpected surprises with the whole exercise thing.

First, my skin is SO much smoother. And not the facial skin [which has contradictorily become rougher] but the skin on my body. I wear boxer shorts and tshirts at home, so there is a lot of exposed skin, and when my hand brushes again one of my limbs now? SO SMOOTH! Buttery smooth, in fact. This is crazy for me, because I have suffered with dry skin all my life. In winters, I empty out a bottle of moisturiser every two weeks, because my skin feels parched.

Conversely, the skin on my face is a little rougher. I have a minimal skin care routine, which involves a spritz with rose water and a little face cream to combat dryness. [Otherwise it is a dried river bed situation with white cracks and flakes of skin. Not comfortable, and darn ugly.] I can’t remember the last time I had a facial, because with all the fat under my skin, my skin was glowing and pink. I still don’t have wrinkles, but I anticipate they will arrive shortly. C’est la vie.

Second, the hardened slabs of fat on my hips have become so much softer. Ok, so I expected that the fat would slowly dissipate – after all that’s the whole point of exercising – but I didn’t expect it to become softer. At first, I panicked because I thought the skin would become floppy, which I’ve seen happening with rapid weight loss. But thankfully, my weight loss is more gradual, and perhaps this is giving the skin time to tauten appropriately. There is no way I can have skin surgery to cut off the excess.

On both the points above, I thought I was imagining things. So I found these interesting articles that corroborate my experience: